This invention relates generally to online video; and more particularly to methods and systems for handling online video for property commerce over the Internet.
The past decades have seen the tremendous growth of Internet traffic, and with it, the birth of a new world of global electronic commerce (e-commerce). E-commerce allows sellers to share their wares with consumers around the world in virtual marketplaces. Through these virtual marketplaces, sellers can open virtual storefronts with little to no capital, quickly and inexpensively distribute information about products and services to a global customer base, and collect payment through electronic fund transfers.
In exchange for these benefits, however, e-commerce drastically changes the relationships between buyers and sellers. One primary manifestation of this change is the difficulty with current technology to give consumers a feel for goods and services before they buy. In a virtual marketplace, a consumer has limited ability to experience a product—to try on clothing, to smell a chef's creation, or to walk through a neighborhood.
Still, as consumer high-speed data capability becomes increasingly ubiquitous, sellers are finding ways to combat those difficulties. The vast majority of e-commerce websites, for example, now use photos along with product descriptions to provide more information to consumers. Some progressive online retailers have even begun to use video, virtual reality applications, three-dimensional modeling, and other tools to create a greater sense of virtual interactivity between consumers and products.
One industry which has experienced this trend has been the real property marketing industry. For years, real estate marketers have experienced the difficulties inherent in dealing with large amounts of data from large numbers of sources. Services, such as the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) help provide some real property listings, but finding unlisted sellers and potential buyers often requires mass advertising and marketing. Traditionally, this includes expensive methods, such as creating full-color print advertisements, purchasing advertising space in multiple locations, planting “For Sale” signs and information at locations for potential drive-by buyers, holding open houses, and guiding personal walk-throughs.
The rise of the Internet has expanded the reach of advertising and has allowed for enhanced marketing capabilities at much lower cost. Still, real estate marketers and agents have found it difficult to communicate the feel of real property to prospective buyers in a virtual space. For example, while it is well accepted in the industry that property listings which include photos tend to be more successful at luring prospective buyers, it is often still difficult to relate the multiple image viewpoints together to convey a cohesive sense of the real property to a potential buyer.
To remedy that and other problems, the industry has begun to see benefits to video marketing. Through video media, potential buyers can take virtual tours of properties, and even listen to audio associated with the video. While this type of information used to be very expensive to distribute (e.g. through shipping video cassette tapes), the Internet provides an inexpensive and efficient video distribution medium. Further, newer video compression technologies and the prevalence of home broadband connections have made it practical to distribute audiovisual advertisements to potential buyers around the world.
There remain, however, significant disadvantages to video marketing. One disadvantage is the cost of producing a quality result. Though most home computers today come with user-friendly photo editing software, much of the video editing software and hardware is cumbersome, expensive, and difficult to learn. The result is that the average property seller or marketer must either spend a significant amount of money to hire a videographer to shoot and process video, or spend a significant amount of time learning to use a video editing system.
Another disadvantage is that, where photos often provide too little information to consumers, videos may provide too much to be useful. For example, say a consumer would like to find a house with a large kitchen. It may be easy to find photos of a kitchen, but difficult to really experience the size and utility of the kitchen from those photos. On the other hand, video of the kitchen may provide a much better representation of the space, but may be difficult to find within the footage of the entire house. Further, while it may be simple to compare photos of many kitchens, it may be cumbersome and time-consuming to find and compare video footage.
Similar difficulties arise in the vast majority of property marketing industries, whether the property is real estate, consumer goods, services, or any other community of buyers and sellers. Thus, though these industries understand the vast advantages of video marketing over photos or plain text, the transition has been slow. The industry has remained in need of simple methods and systems for handling online video for property marketing.